This is No Chernobyl – This Time The Plume is in the Ocean

“”The operator of the crippled Fukushima complex begins releasing 11,500 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific to make room in storage tanks for even more highly contaminated water. The government says the release does not pose an immediate threat to humans.”

I published the below on April 21 to little notice, I wonder if recent events change that. [from wikipedia]

The North Pacific Gyre, located in the northern Pacific Ocean, is one of the five major oceanic gyres. This gyre comprises most of the northern Pacific Ocean. It is the largest ecosystem on our planet. It is located between the equator and 50º N latitude and occupies an area of approximately 20 million square kilometers.[1] The gyre has a clockwise circular pattern and comprises four prevailing ocean currents: the North Pacific Current to the north, the California Current to the east, the North Equatorial Current to the south, and the Kuroshio Current to the west. It is the site of an unusually intense collection of man-made marine debris, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

SIROCCOhas performed, at the request of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), simulations using the 3D SIROCCO ocean circulation model to investigate the dispersion in seawater of radionuclides emitted by the Fukushima nuclear plant. The model uses a stretched horizontal grid with a variable horizontal resolution, from 600m x 600m at the nearest grid point from Fukushima, to 5km x 5km offshore. The initial fields (T,S,U,V,SSH) and the lateral open boundary conditions are provided by the Mercator Ocean PSY4V1R3 system (one field per day, horizontal resolution 1/12 ° x 1/12 °). At the sea surface, the ocean model is forced by the meteorological fluxes delivered every 3hours by ECMWF. The tidal forcing at the lateral open boundaries is provided by the T-UGO model , implemented for this purpose by the SIROCCO team on the Japonese Pacific coast.http://sirocco.omp.obs-mip.fr/outils/Symphonie/Produits/Japan/SymphoniePreviJapan.htm

“Very close to the nuclear plant – less than half a mile (800 meters) or so – sea creatures might be in danger of problems like genetic mutations if the dumping goes on a long time, he said. But there shouldn’t be any serious hazard farther away “unless this escalates into something much, much larger than it has so far,” he said.”

“Pacific albacore (sometimes referred to as ‘white tuna’)… typically begin an expansive migration in the spring and early summer in waters off Japan that continues through the late summer into inshore waters off the U.S. Pacific coast, and ends in late fall and winter in the western Pacific Ocean…”

“People are concerned that the tuna fish in Japan will migrate to the U.S. They will swim from Japan to the West Coast and arrive late this summer. Is there a cause for concern for U.S. tuna then?

While the U.S. FDA is checking any food imported from Japan for radiation, this tuna won’t be imported. A group of concerned fishermen in Washington wants the government to test these tuna when they arrive on the West Coast later this year.”

Pacific albacore, particularly juveniles (2-5 years old), typically begin an expansive migration in the spring and early summer in waters off Japan that continues through the late summer into inshore waters off the U.S. Pacific coast, and ends in late fall and winter in the western Pacific Ocean. The timing and geographic extent of the albacore’s migration in a given year is strongly influenced by oceanic conditions.

“”Some of the fish that are feeding there may be picking up some radiation and we don’t want to be harvesting that here in the United States if they do,” said Vidar Wespestad, a scientist with the American Fisherman’s Research Foundation.

Torpedo-shaped tuna leave the waters off Japan every spring, swimming at speeds of 50 mph to the waters off Oregon and Washington, arriving late summer.”